The Shape of the Soul: What Mystical Experience Tells Us about Ourselves and Reality

A favourite book title of mine is Shapes of Time, by Ken McNamara. Why? It is not just an excellent book on the dynamics of evolution, but it reminds us that the relationship between two taken-for-granted dimensions of so-called reality are complex and mysteriously intertwined. So The Shape of the Soul, by SMN member Paul Marshall, not only has a deeply intriguing title, but it also points to fundamental questions aptly summed up in the subtitle: what mystical experience tells us about ourselves and reality. Chapter 1, "Mystical Perceptions," reminds us that such perceptions are a perennial part of human experience, informing us that "reality" is not always the simple humdrum experience we might take it to be. The doors of perception to higher realities are not always open to individuals or humanity as a whole, but when they do open the experiencer is given "a sense of what it is like to apprehend the universe as it truly is, a highly differentiated but nonetheless undivided whole." Most mystical experience is accompanied by an expanded consciousness and a sense of "peace that passes all understanding" as if homecoming to a comfortable transcendent knowing.

Paul summarises how mystical experiences generate a sense of profound "intuitive knowledge...unity, wholeness…[and]…contact with deeper realities." Such faculties which, Steiner might call "supersensory" are evidently latent and can "awaken" within us. Can we here avoid comparison with Gebser's treatise on The Ever-Present Origin, as wellspring of consciousness structures? Mystical experiences simultaneously erupt / awaken "within" us and propel or elevate us "into" a greater, more expansive or cosmic consciousness reality. Beyond the spatial metaphor we might consider Sheldrake's radio analogy of tuning into frequencies not previously accessible. Paul reminds us this may involve more than "heightened attention, and vivid sparkling colors" and, rather, a tuning into the world as it "truly is" on many trans-spatial, trans-temporal, this-worldly, other worldly, even no-worldly levels. As we shall see each one of us is a perceptual monad, whose reality is 'part' of a universal whole. [But beware the limitations of levels and parts vocabulary.]

In chapters 2 and 3 ("The Land beyond the Sea" and "Into the house of Death") we are reminded that mystical experience often dispels the fear of death, bringing a sense of immortality and intuitions of reincarnation. Paul's ever-present scholarship leads us from Gilgamesh and Plato to Jung and 20th century studies of Near Death Experiences (NDEs), and how temporary psychological death necessarily disrupts ordinary self-awareness. Such other-worldly journeys may simply be into "this world understood more deeply." [Why in a vast universe, whole by definition, would worlds appear separate]? 'Tis almost poetry to read that "only a simple shift in mental poise" is necessary to apprehend "the world and its inhabitants with a loving, inclusive uncluttered mind." Journeys to the threshold of death while liberating also bring up age old issues of judgement, instituted in religion and law, and evaluation of our own morality. Origen is quoted on remorse being the "torment of hell" born of our unfaithfulness to our own, internal sense of goodness. In short mystical experience can reorient us to self-evaluation before we judge others. [Shades of G. K. Chesterton perhaps?] Chapter 4 asks "Who do you think you are?, the know thyself question often thrust forward by spiritual experience and mature reflection. "It is not the everyday self that is to be identified with the ultimate reality, but the higher self or soul." This raises a perennial question: can we see the relationship between the divine in ourselves and the divine in all, and not divide the soul. Paul's suggested answer is that spiritual practice should not eliminate the "normally isolated and relatively ignorant self" but harmonise it (his italics) with the underlying reality of a loving higher self. This parallels R. M Bucke's "duplex" of the self conscious and Cosmic Conscious self.

In Chapter 5, "Soul Spheres," the literal, symbolic and mystically perceived 'shape' of the soul is considered: for example, Hildegard of Bingen's vision of "soul globes" entering the bodies of pregnant women, and the spherical eye as the "traditional symbol of the divine." [Beside the sphericity of the sun, planets and many seeds, one is reminded of Abbot's allegory Flatland where the higher beings were "well rounded" spheres – the adjectives are in our language – containing maximum volume in minimum circumference.] In Chapter 6, "The Logic of Unity" Paul shows himself a big fan of Leibniz and his monad (2 pages of index citations), explained as a complete concept, and "no mere abstract entity"…"living centres of activity and perception" ranging from insentient monads (minerals) to sensible entities with perceptible appetites and desires or animal souls (anima), to human monads with reflective consciousness (apperception), spirits and minds with access to necessary truths and abstract ideas grounded in God. [Are these Steiner's supersensory faculties of thought capable of intuiting natural law, such as gravity and entropy, without direct recourse to sensory perception?]

Traditionally "mystical philosophies have often recognised that some kind of superior knowledge or intellectual intuition…is attainable" as in the "ordinarily hidden, cosmic dimensions" of our souls. Chapter 7, "Worlds within Worlds" addresses the "experiential support for a universe…minds [perceptual perspectives or monads] that represent one another in their entirety and constitute the basis of matter." The shape of the soul is a communal affair [put another way 'affairs of the soul' involve relationship]. Paul qualifies his exposition, perhaps unnecessarily, with apologies for being "highly speculative" but in his discussion of how Thomas Traherne vigorously opposed Thomas Hobbes' view of human nature as fundamentally self-centered we see the play of schism between mysticism and rationalism. Traherne believed in the soul's need for communion with the "divine whole," the "cosmos of beings" to share our joys and "to be ourselves the joy and delight of other persons."

In chapter 8, "The Physics of Experience," the mystic finds scientific support for Leibnizian metaphysics with relativity, space-time continua and the wholeness or interconnectedness of quantum physics and non-locality experiments. With Whitehead endorsing Leibniz we can view the world as experiential in nature with "monads passing from cosmic state to state" ever becoming or "striving, experiential units," as occasion affects occasion [Perhaps we can identify!?] Paul acknowledges the "fantastical" aspect of these ideas but quotes John Barbour who regarded such "fantastical philosophy" as "the one radical alternative to Cartesian-Newtonian materialism" with the potential to be a "framework for natural science." Preferring to ground his discussions "in philosophies more directly informed by mystical experience."

Paul (Chapter 9) introduces origin and creation cosmogonies, distinguishing "vertical causation" and "horizontal causation" respectively driven by causation "behind" (external to) and "within" the phenomena. Plotinian thought saw abundant intellect flowing from the One source to incomplete, inchoate intellects, which in turn desire to 'return' to know the One, in a process of intellectual becoming. Perhaps, similarly, within Hindu Tantra, in the Kashmir Shaivism philosophy, the highest "Ancient Light" of primordial consciousness (Siva, the source) contains within an "I-ness" or reflexive awareness, a mystical self potentially embracing (experiencing) a much greater part of the whole than allowed by the 'normal' non-mystical or grossly dualistic state. But the twofold dualism of unifying and diversifying tendencies is manifest in nature / creation (electricity, magnetism) and the "cycles of consciousness" – interplay of subject and object, feeling and cognition [as also manifest in individual human development.] Lorenz Oken spoke of two processes: "one individualising, vitalising, and I one universalising, destructive" – relinquishing individuality "to become the universe." Paul contrasts Eros, the pull toward unity and Ego, the pull toward separation.

Chapters 10 and 11, "Where do you think you are going?" and "The Making of God" review various evolutionary concepts such as the currently unpopular progressive/teleological notions of the "Great Chain of Being" and the "Tree of Life" before transitioning to more radical ideas of "transgenerational epigenetics" (the intergenerational transmission of some medical conditions) and Ian Stevenson's notion of the psychosphere ("mind carrier") from reincarnation studies. Could reincarnation work "in tandem with species evolution in a progressive manner directed towards ends."? (cf., McIntosh, Network 109, or long before him Alfred Russel Wallace's "purposive evolutionism" in a universe with "infinite grades of power…knowledge and wisdom" and higher beings influencing the lower). Here again Evolutionary Monadology is a consistent fit, seeing all creatures on paths to fulfilment, and doesn't Wallace neatly capture the infinite flavour of mystical insight?

The Shape of the Soul is a highly recommended and inspired, conscientious, scholarly and bold tour de force. Having delved deeply into 'affairs of the soul' one of Paul's conclusions is simple: "attempts to reduce mystical experience to religious conditioning and/or neurobiology have been unconvincing, and the possibility remains that mystical experiences do what mystics strongly feel they do, which is to reveal deeper aspects of reality." "When this divine self is encountered as the numinous Other" the vocabulary of revelation, God, divine double, Cosmic Christ or Cosmic Buddha naturally emerges to describe these experiential realms of reality which deeply impact the shape and affairs of the soul. The such spiritual development has accompanied us through the ages and will likely continue to do so as human spirituality evolves. The perennial nature of such soul quests is in itself a testimony to their staying power and relevance to a deeper knowledge and understanding of reality.